New Orleans again

I know I've been banging on about this but the more I read and see and hear the more I find it incredible that this situation should have arisen as it did in the first place and then been so badly handled. Here's a report claiming that British tourists in an hotel in New Orleans were simply left by the police who came to evacuate people before the hurricane hit. A different newspaper and a different story, The Times claims that British Consular officials were refused access to New Orleans three times when they wanted to try and offer aid to "scores of British tourists" trapped there. One story sums up what was happening

Peter McGowan, whose sister Teresa Cherrie was trapped in the devastated area with her boyfriend John Drysdale, described yesterday how they had been reduced to looting to survive: "They are having to scavenge for food and Teresa is terrified," he said. "At first it was the gangs they feared, then it was trigger-happy cops."

The family told how Cherrie, 42, and Drysdale, 41, both from Renfrew, near Glasgow, had searched for food outside a supermarket after shelves were stripped by gangs.

The couple were eventually rescued yesterday afternoon from an apartment block in the French Quarter of Baton Rouge One New Orleans blogger in the city wrote yesterday: "Bunch of stressed out, trigger-happy police and military types driving by suspicious as all hell. It's not safe standing out on the street."

This editorial in The Times, entitled "When the levees broke, the waters rose and Bush's credibility sank with New Orleans" makes interesting reading and draws parallels between this disaster and earlier ones where natural disasters have highlighted inequalities and led to political change. The Johnstown flood in 1889 and the Galveston hurricane in 1900 are mentioned as is the 1927 flood which led to the rise of Huey Long.

Meanwhile the BBC reporters on the ground are saying that getting troops there is starting to make a difference. The BBC site also has a roundup of international press coverage of the disaster. Two things in pieces I've read today really hit home.

........ after the 9/11 attacks Fema was absorbed into the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, in the expectation that its expertise would be vital in the wake of another devastating attack.

The result, however, was that Fema became part of the counter-terrorism apparatus and its preparedness for natural disaster atrophied. When the Louisiana state authorities appealed for medical aid from Fema, the first delivery they received was a shipment of drugs and equipment for use in the event of a chemical weapon attack.

---

It took four days to begin a large-scale evacuation of people stranded in the Superdome stadium and to bring in significant amounts of food and water to an American city easily accessible by motorway.

Relief agencies took half that time to reach Indonesia after the Boxing Day tsunami. [My emphasis]

Both from Julian Borger writing from Baton Rouge.

Finally, there are some truly moving images at Truthout (thanks for flagging that site Mouseperson of Canada!)